Almost Done!

The grout is in! I am more than extatic to say that my tile project is complete. Horray! All i have to do now is put the light switch covers back on the outlets (with the power unnecessarily turned off...better safe than sorry, again) and paint. I have a few surface cracks from settling, etc to fix first....and if aaron and i could ever agree on a paint color this would be much easier. The grout dried darker than anticipated but i am still very happy with it! I can't wait to decorate with my lettering above the cabinets now!



The blue tape is there because I still need to paint the kickboards black under the cabinets.


Any suggestions for what to do about the window casing? I can't decide whether i should stain it to match the floors, paint it white like the rest of the door casings and baseboards, or black like the cabinets.



This probably doesn't look much different than the picks without grout...but trust me, it's fabulous! ...and hard as cement, it should last a loooong time. My friend just got her real estate license and said that a tile countertop adds $2000-$2500 to the value of your home. Plus your house will sell faster without yellow laminate. Cost of doing it myself: 300 bucks! woop woop!

Mommy's Helper

As many of you know, I have a small obsession with old windows and old doors. It started after owning a near 100 year old home. When our home in Green Bay was built, a door wasn't just a door, it was something beautiful to look at before you entered a room and windows weren't just functional elements to let in light and fresh air, but beautiful frames for the views they created. Anyway, i found this particular crusty old door and fell in love with it...broken window and all. I'm sure it's full of lead paint and will poison my children if they suck on it, so they'll have to stick to the old teething ring instead. I had to find a place for it in my home, but old doors do not fit the door frames of homes built in the late 1970's, so I turned the door into a chalkboard and added a cute little vinyl bistro sign. Here is Reese checking my measurements (with her own tape measure) for the chalkboard to make sure they are right.





Here is the (almost) finished product. I'm going to anchor it to the wall after we paint. Quincy is creeping everywhere and i don't want it to come down on her, it weighs like 40 pounds! I haven't tried out the chalkboard yet, hopefully it really works!

Not Enough Chocolate In the World

I am home. We left Boise at 8pm last night and drove to Salt Lake City where we flew out of this morning. Yesterday was our 6th anniversary. For some odd reason, Aaron and i are never actually together on our anniversary. Last year he was in Omaha on a job interview, the year before that, I was in California...and so on. So THIS year we had big plans to leave the kids behind and go out on a REAL date. (you know...not a "fork over tons of cash for babysitters date" or a "we'll watch your kids tomorrow night date" or a "put the kids to bed and have a date at home date"....I'm talking about the best kind there is date...a leave the kids with grandma date! Because we live so far away from both sets of grandparents, we have yet to experience the probably-over-rated kind of joy that we imagine can only come from dropping your kids off with your folks for a night. I was really looking forward to it. Unfortunately, things just got crazy, and there was just too much (fishing) to do and too many people (my sisters) to see, and our big anniversary date didn't happen this vacation. We'll celebrate another time, so that's not a big deal at all. What kills me is that since we vetoed the big night out, it's like worlds collided to make the rest of the trip home as miserable as possible ... in a sick ironic way to remind us of why we needed a night out to begin with. Here's how our ended up instead:

We left Boise at 8pm, much later than planned We had a hotel booked in SLC near the airport because we had a 6am flight this morning and didn't want to make the almost-4 hour drive from boise in the crazy-early morning hours and result with grouchy kids. Instead we got INSANELY grouchy kids....but it was ok, because we made great time into Utah and could still squeeze in a decent nights sleep before a long day of traveling.

Until we were 13 miles outside of Salt Lake City. It was 11:30 when the construction cones and blinking merge arrows appeared. It was 1:30 am when we got into our hotel room 13 miles away. It was 3 am when Quincy went to sleep. It was 3:30 am when Reese went to sleep. It was 4:30am when we got our wake up call. We drove to the airport, returned the rental car, checked in, miraculously got through security ("excuse me Miss, but your infant needs to remove her shoes as well...yeah those elastic socks with the pea pods on them...and the bow on her head....put them through the scanner please.") Followed by a 2 hour flight to Phoenix, a 2 and 1/2 hour layover there, a 2 and 1/2 hour flight from Phoenix to Tulsa, and a 2 and 1/2 drive home from there to bella vista. That is 21 hours of traveling with a 2 yr old and a 7 month old...and a 31 yr old who has to go back to a weeks worth of work tomorrow.

Needless to say, I'm exhausted...and there is not enough chocolate in the world to help me recover from my travels today.

OH! And Quincy cut her first tooth yesterday...so that was fun.
And the airline sent our Luggage to Philidelphia. yes Philidelphia ...seriously.

Four Generations

Sam with Myrtle (Hatch) Tenney, Lynn (Tenney) Lawrence, Meg (Lawrence) Willardson with Aaron Willardson, and Reese and Quincy Willardson at The Homestead in Rexburg, Idaho.

June 2007

Why We Love It Here

On Saturday night we rented a Pontoon Boat and went out on Loch Lomond to watch the sunset. it was soooo beautiful and the girls had a really great time. Aaron was wishing he had brought his fishing pole, of course, and I managed to only have one nervous breakdown the whole time we were on the boat! (FYI...boats are not my favorite thing the world...and just to clarify, it's not the water i have a problem with...it's the boat. And it's a whole other kind of anxiety that starts up once i finally do relax...and Aaron starts talking about buying one.)

Better safe than sorry.

Captain Aaron and First Mate Reese



Notice I am holding both kids here, where is Aaron?

....Ahhh, there he is.

...can you blame him?

Daddy points out the "Barbie-Princess-Pink" sky to Reese

I'm actually only holding onto the children because they are the ones with the life vests.

This may look like cruel and unusual punishment...but Quincy actually can breathe in that thing. She actually really loved wearing it. Our conclusion: either stinky life vests actually taste pretty good, or Quincy was afraid that if she fussed and made a peep we would place her in a padded room.

"Wook at dose fissies down there, daddy!"

A Work In Progress my kitchen gets a face-lift!

Here are some Before and After shots of the kitchen...well i say "after", but it's really a "during" shot because there is still sooo much more to do! But here is an update...i think it is coming along really nicely.

How about that floor? That's GLITTERED ceramic tile baby! I used a chisel, a rubber mallet and goggles to pound that out piece by piece! The brown, blue and orange indoor/outdoor carpet (in the kitchen) came up with much more ease, but the mildew problem in the subfloor was pretty nasty. The peach wallpaper was vinyl and was applied directly to the drywall...actually it was applied directly to 3 other layers of wallpaper in various shades of avacado green, baby blue and harvest gold.

View from the dining room. I'll post all those pics another time...perhaps when i complete the "sink" side of the countertop and kitchen...which will hopefully be this weekend.

The outlet on the far right is the one i got electrocuted on. I think it was the spirit of Dorothy (the old lady who used to live here, who probably hand picked that brown carpet) coming back to haunt me for scraping down and re-texturing her precious popcorn cottage cheese ceilings.

These pictures were all taken the week we bought the house a year and a half ago. Reese was only 11 months old in this pic.

much better, yes? New floors (aaron helped me put that in in ONE weekend), new ceiling, new wains cot on the cabinets, paint for cabinets, updated hardware, new paint for walls, new light fixtures (which also would have been an opportunity for me to be electrocuted, but luckily my superhero dad shut the power off before we got started on those) new baseboards, and I installed venetian plaster, bead board and new chair rail/casing in the entryway. (shown in the background...yay)

I cut and laid ALL 720 ceramic tiles MYSELF! yeah, I know right? I don't want to sound cocky...well ok, yes i do... i'm feeling awesome right now.. My hands, back and shoulders however, are currently NOT awesome though...they hurt. Cutting tile is not easy on your body. I still have to add in a few tiles, clean everything up and Grout everything-that's why it still looks a little spacey, there's no grout yet. I haven't decided on a color yet, any suggestions?
















I'm also going to distress the cabinets a little. Aaron's aunt valle did her cabinets like this also and her painter distressed them, (her kitchen is BEAUTIFUL!!) so i think i'll do the same. I also just got my uppercase living order in...i have the words for bread, milk, flour sugar, eggs, knife, fork, spoon, oil, butter, etc. all in french in a 4 inch black swirly script (vinyl lettering..it looks like stencil, but better) to go on the 1 ft wall space across the tops of my cabinets...it will be the finishing touch once we decide if we like the wall color, right now aaron doesn't care for the color.

By the way, just for bragging sake...this ENTIRE transformation, from start to finish, including 3 new light fixtures, an air compressor, a desk, curtains, wall lettering nail gun and hitachi compound meiter saw (which i would have bought in pink if it were available) and all the materials for the above shown projects...for UNDER $1300 bucks. I got a smokin' deal on my floor and the tile...and did EVERYthing myself. Dad...are you proud? I think i'm ready for my hot pink toolbelt now.